Weapon Damage: bonus successes from your attack roll immediately convert to damage, not bonus damage dice. So if you rolled 2 bonus successes on your attack roll, your weapon damage would be 2 plus whatever you roll from your damage pool (DM+Ability). This is to adjust what I feel is a bit of a whiff factor when it comes to damage in WH.

The first one definitely favors the PCs, since most GMs won't get fiddly enough to increase the attack pool for their lieutenants and villains. It does help to make heavy weapons more attractive - I've found that going for "finesse" style weapons which allow me to improve my offensive and defensive capabilities with a single stat are much more cost-effective in the long run. I'd give it a try and see what effects it might have.

The second change favors whomever tends to have more dice. If a GM favors using minions who group up, then dice pools can get pretty large (don't forget Tactical Edge!). This makes improving defenses much more important to prevent an early wound penalty death spiral, especially if the lieutenant/villain is behind a row of weaker enemies that the PCs have to kill in order to reach him or her. I'd hesitate before implementing this one, just because it strongly encourages players to increase Agility and Toughness to survive combat. There's already enough things to encourage focus on combat; I don't think I'd want to add to them.

Alternatively, if this rule explicitly does not apply to minions, then it will favor the PCs (since there are usually more PCs than lieutenants and villains). It makes the lieutenants and villains scarier, but also means that the PCs will take them down more quickly. How about a compromise - you can choose to have any 10s that you roll on an attack roll convert directly to damage (as long as you hit the target in the first place), but then they do not explode.

The first one definitely favors the PCs, since most GMs won't get fiddly enough to increase the attack pool for their lieutenants and villains. It does help to make heavy weapons more attractive - I've found that going for "finesse" style weapons which allow me to improve my offensive and defensive capabilities with a single stat are much more cost-effective in the long run. I'd give it a try and see what effects it might have.

My plan here wasn't so much to make heavy weapons more attractive, but to make weapon tricks and stunts more attractive. As it stands, even when specialized in a weapon, complexity added to wagers make it pretty tough to be a hero. In the years since we started playing, my players really haven't experimented much with tricks and part of the reason is the penalties really start to outweigh the benefits very quickly.

The other reason I'm inclined to do this is it gets rid of the whole "ignore complexity versus minions" bit. Since we play online, those sorts of circumstantial rules are a real PITA to apply.

Favoring the players isn't a terrible thing since its relatively easy to adjust the Health Tracks of adversaries to compensate.

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The second change favors whomever tends to have more dice. If a GM favors using minions who group up, then dice pools can get pretty large (don't forget Tactical Edge!). This makes improving defenses much more important to prevent an early wound penalty death spiral, especially if the lieutenant/villain is behind a row of weaker enemies that the PCs have to kill in order to reach him or her. I'd hesitate before implementing this one, just because it strongly encourages players to increase Agility and Toughness to survive combat. There's already enough things to encourage focus on combat; I don't think I'd want to add to them.

It's interesting you would say that since the game already seems to favor a "race to 10 dice". I guess its just me, but I feel the current damage rules lean heavily on the whiff-factor. Because you need to roll 7+ on each damage die, its very easy to roll these great attack rolls and then get a terrible result on damage. No matter how well you hit your target, it's possible to do 0 damage.

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Alternatively, if this rule explicitly does not apply to minions, then it will favor the PCs (since there are usually more PCs than lieutenants and villains). It makes the lieutenants and villains scarier, but also means that the PCs will take them down more quickly.

It would apply to EVERYONE. Minions aren't much of an issue because they tend to be glass cannons. Their first hit is hard, but once reduced to half strength, a band isn't much of a threat anymore.

Lieutenants and Villains really wouldn't be that much scarier. Maybe if I started loading them up with Grand Fury and giving them all 8-10d in melee. Most of the adversaries range from 6-8d in melee, and I don't see a lot of escalation beyond that point.

Would it encourage the players to spend more of their points to increase Agility and Toughness? Maybe.

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How about a compromise - you can choose to have any 10s that you roll on an attack roll convert directly to damage (as long as you hit the target in the first place), but then they do not explode.

Eh. If I was seeing the sort of swingy-ness I see in Savage Worlds or 7th Sea, maybe. But I don't get that from WH. But all that is why I'm tempted to throw this in as a limited experiment, just to see what real effect it has on play.

I can think of a couple of other alternatives:a) 1 point of damage per 2 bonus successes (a bit more math intensive, but it would blunt the effect and stay consistent with other parts of the system)b) Bonus successes to your attack roll insure a minimum of 1 point of damagec) Bonus successes set a "minimum damage threshold"; you roll damage normally, but if you roll less than the # of bonus successes, you do that much damage. Example: Say you really luck out against a target with 3 Avoidance and roll 8 successes. That's 5 bonus successes. You then roll damage dice (9 dice in this case) but only roll 3 damage. That's below the threshold, so you do 5 points of damage for the hit. OTOH, lets say you rolled 6 successes, or 6 points of damage. That's above the threshold, so you still do 6 points of damage.

Every one of those "alternatives" feels a bit more convoluted than I'd like. It's just very disheartening (for players AND your's truly) to roll great on one roll and have the second result completely steal your thunder. It just doesn't feel very heroic to me.

From the sound of it, however, implementing BOTH of these changes at the same time is probably a bad idea, since both of them affect the potential damage of a given attack. It would make more sense to introduce each one individually to test out the effect on play.

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